NoDa Arts District: The Johnston Mill: A Look At Past, Present, And Future Of NoDa Cornerstone

Press release from the NoDa Arts District:

Evan Plante

July 7, 2021

North Charlotte’s third and final mill complex to be preserved and renovated into housing is underway at the Johnston Mill. Located on the corner of NoDa’s downtown crossroads of 36th and Davidson, the Johnston Mill has been one of the most significant entities in the neighborhood for more than a century. 

Johnston Mill: Early years 1915-1945

W. Johnston built the first portion of the Johnston Mill in 1916 on land that once was part of the Mecklenburg Mill Village. Seventeen mill houses once existed here as 37th and Mercury streets once extended across Davidson. But Johnston consolidated ownership and propriety of the three North Charlotte Mills and built his namesake mill here. 

Several auxiliary buildings didn’t make it to the rehabilitation and have been lost to time, including: most recently the machine shop on 36th Street that blocked the view into the complex from much of the street, several wooden cotton warehouse buildings with train sidings and platforms on both sides of the picker room, and a preserved historic mill home prominently placed in the parking area between the Johnston and Mecklenburg. 

Let’s not underestimate the importance of the Johnston patriarchy’s impact on North Charlotte. Although C.W. Johnston doesn’t get credit for designing North Charlotte and its signature twin mill villages and downtown, Johnston ended up as either the owner, proprietor, or provider of all three North Charlotte mills, villages, and many community hubs for his employees. 

Johnston Mill: Fits and starts 1975-2008

The Johnston Mill was sold to a Gastonia-based textile company in 1975, and sold again in 1976 to a Greenville, S.C.-based firm for use as warehousing. In 1980, Rock Hill-based Stark Enterprises purchased the Johnston warehouse. 

By the mid-1980s, many abandoned and neglected storefronts on Davidson Street were finding new life with artists and owners like Ruth Ava Lyons and Paul Sires, and Paul McBroom. By the end of the 1980s, the City of Charlotte took notice of NoDa’s revival, and The Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission recognized the three underused mills as historic properties, leading the way to tax credits for preservation efforts. In 1990, Stark bought the adjacent Mecklenburg Mill to complement the Johnston, and announced plans to renovate them into housing. 

“The Johnston Mill Apartments in 1993 would rent for $289 per month and featured a single room with arched brick windows, and a bathroom. Renters were families who made between $9,600 – $24,350. A lot of care was given to the perception of safety; security entrances, a full time family support liaison to help residents find employment, and the presence of Charlotte Police on site in their own boxing academy located in an adjacent building between the mills. This facility would later become a daycare too. Residents were given a membership to the Johnston YMCA with their lease.”

The renovation of the Johnston Apartments was a problem from the beginning. Many structural problems were covered up with cosmetic fixes, and by 2005 or 2006 code enforcement stepped in.

The Johnston and Mecklenburg Mills again were covered in plywood and fenced off, and in 2007 the City of Charlotte created a committee to explore the future of the complex. HNCNA members were allowed to tour the buildings and, according to Kevin Sutton and Hollis Nixon of the HNCNA, they found collapsed floors and trees growing inside the building. Most signs were pointing to the mills being demolished and the land sold off, but in an attempt to save the history and fabric of NoDa, the HNCNA reached out to a Minneapolis-based developer called Artspace, who specialized in rehabbing old buildings for artist use. The HNCNA even went as far as printing T-shirts saying “WE WANT ARTSPACE,” but the partnership never materialized, and in 2007 the City of Charlotte awarded the bid to Tuscan Group.

NoDa and city leadership worked for years to pick a suitor for our signature mills. The demographics of NoDa changed significantly too. From the HNCNA’s concerns for the safety and wellbeing of children growing up here in 1993, to remaining in touch with the artists who rebuilt North Charlotte, to the 2008 housing and market crash that led to the closure of most NoDa galleries, by 2011 the NoDa Association’s priorities had to change.

Johnston Mill: What’s inside today?

The original hall, two stories running parallel to 36th Street, has no interior partitions or walls and is wide open with sunlight pouring in from both sides. The photos (right/left) show the open wooden plank floors that housed the textile machinery and workers. This may be the last time these enormous rooms are able to be viewed in their original totality, before they are partitioned into condos. The age and wear of the original maple and yellow pine floors (birds eye, ambrosia, curly, and yellow pine) brought in from Vermont, Michigan, or Wisconsin, and cut and milled on site in 1915, is evident. These floors can’t be saved in the renovation, so they are meticulously being pulled up and stored by a local craftsman who plans to make furniture and home decor. (We’ll follow up on this project later this year, as the plan is to keep as much of the Johnston’s original hardwoods in North Charlotte as possible.) Below the bottom level floorboards we find the brick piers built on dirt that hasn’t seen daylight in over a century.

There are several “towers” on the Johnston Mill: The first is closest to the LYNX and began as the picker room. Trains used to pull right up to the front of this tower, where there was a freight platform, trestle, and several auxiliary buildings used for shipping and receiving. This tower was converted in 1926 to include an industrial winch elevator to move supplies up or down in the building. The original 24-window facade facing 36th Street also had a tower addition built around this time. This tower represented a pivot toward the roads and modernization, as trucking began to take over, and bathrooms were built. The other three towers are on the 1930 side closest to Dog Bar. Including the tower we see today with white paint scrawling JOHNSTON MFG CO., these three towers are stairwells for access to the offices located here, which overlook most of NoDa and view into the villages.

Old brick, dusty hardwood beams and floors, and decades of art and graffiti are all that’s left inside the Johnston Mill today. But by this time next year, we should see 84 apartments. New buildings will rise around the mill too. Community Builders will create an entirely new condo building in the 36th Street parking area, flanked by new retail at street level. Future plans for infill buildings between the Johnston and Mecklenburg will take the place of the old boxing academy site. And for the first time in decade, North Charlotte’s mills will be full of activity once again. 

This press release was produced by the NoDa Arts District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.